A port that Britain held for over a century
Britain took control of Aden in 1839, mainly to secure a coaling station on the sea route to India. When the Suez Canal opened in 1869, the port became more valuable still. For much of the twentieth century it was a naval base, a major refuelling stop and a commercial centre with a mixed population of Arabs, Indians, Somalis and others. After 1945 it also hosted a large British military presence, which was reinforced when Britain left bases elsewhere in the region.
The hinterland, made up of many small sheikhdoms and sultanates, was governed through treaties. In 1963 Britain brought Aden into the Federation of South Arabia, partly to build a political structure that would survive independence. The move was unpopular with many Adenis, who believed the federation’s rural rulers were conservative and tied to British interests.
Insurgency and rival movements
Armed resistance began in late 1963, after a grenade attack in December that injured the High Commissioner, Sir Kennedy Trevaskis, and killed others. A state of emergency followed. The conflict combined rural fighting in the mountains with urban terrorism in Aden itself. Egypt, then under Gamal Abdel Nasser, was heavily involved in Yemen’s own civil war on the other side of the border and supported anti-British groups.
Two nationalist organisations competed for leadership. The National Liberation Front (NLF) was more militant and had roots in the rural areas. The Front for the Liberation of Occupied South Yemen (FLOSY) was backed more directly by Egypt. They fought each other as well as the British, a feature that made any negotiated handover harder to arrange.
The 1966 decision
In February 1966 the Labour government of Harold Wilson published a Defence White Paper. It said that Britain would grant independence to South Arabia by 1968 and would then withdraw its forces, without maintaining a defence agreement. The decision reflected both cost and a wider view that Britain should reduce its commitments east of Suez. It also gave local groups little reason to cooperate with the federation. If Britain was leaving anyway, the main question was who would take over.
The summer of 1967
The closure of the Suez Canal after the Six-Day War in June 1967 hurt Aden’s shipping trade. That month also brought a sudden security crisis. On 20 June, members of the South Arabian Police mutinied in the Crater district, and a group of British soldiers was killed in the confusion. Reports at the time and later put the number at more than twenty, although exact figures vary by source. British troops lost control of Crater for around two weeks.
In early July, the 1st Battalion, Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders, under Lieutenant Colonel Colin Mitchell, moved back into Crater. The operation drew publicity in Britain, and Mitchell became widely known as “Mad Mitch”. The reoccupation restored order temporarily but did not alter the political direction. The federation’s government was visibly losing authority, and the army that the British had hoped would hold it together was divided.
The accelerated exit
In the autumn, Britain brought forward its plans. A new High Commissioner, Sir Humphrey Trevelyan, arrived in the summer with the task of arranging an orderly transfer. The expected talks in Geneva with nationalist representatives did not produce the broad coalition that London wanted. The federal government collapsed in the face of the NLF’s growing strength, and in the final weeks the NLF effectively took over most of the territory. The army of South Arabia, rather than backing FLOSY, largely sided with the NLF.
British forces departed on 29 November 1967, and independence was proclaimed on 30 November, a few months earlier than the 1968 deadline. The last troops left by sea and air. Trevelyan departed on the same day, and Britain handed power to the NLF, whose leader, Qahtan al-Shaabi, became the first president of the new People’s Republic of South Yemen.
What followed
The new state moved quickly toward a Marxist-oriented system. In 1970 it was renamed the People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen, and it nationalised much of the economy. It was the only avowedly Marxist state in the Arab world, and it received support from the Soviet Union and its allies. Internal struggles within the leadership were frequent and sometimes violent, including a destructive conflict in 1986. South Yemen merged with North Yemen in 1990 to form the Republic of Yemen.
For Britain, the departure from Aden was one of the clearest signs of a post-imperial reset. It came in the same year as the pound devaluation, which strengthened the argument that the country could no longer afford its far-flung commitments. Critics of the decision argued that the speed and the lack of a settled successor left a vacuum. Defenders replied that a longer stay would only have prolonged a fight that Britain could not win. Both arguments continue to appear in histories of the period.